New Year's Resolutions? Nah, I'll pass, thanks.

We've survived through the holiday season, although we're still dealing withone someone in the house being sick at all times. This has been passing around since Thanksgiving, when Hubby and I caught the sickness from my mother's fiance. Fortunately, we've missed the stomach flu variation, but being sick through my mother's wedding (and trying to do the flowers and some decs for it as well while being the Matron of honor) was really no treat, and the night we arrived in Portland (with 1 day before the wedding), Hubby was congested and feverish again. A few days after arriving at home, MIL is also now sick. Whee! Although we finally convinced the furnce people to come out and fix a squished duct underneath the house, so she is now getting heat in her bedroom and bathroom. Progress made on fixing the previous people's stupid mistakes...

But the wedding was beautiful and meaningful to the people who mattered most -- my mother and her new husband. After 26 years of being a single mother to an only daughter, she has now become mother to several more daughters, a son, and some grandchildren who are old enough to be supplying great-grandchildren at any moment! Not sure that part sunk in, but she was willing to joke about having grandchildren now, not just grandhorses and grandcats.

We also, of course, forgot the camera, so am waiting anxiously for pics from other family members. Will post those once they start arriving.

My New Year's Resolution was going to be to make it through a large amount of the stash. However, something better came along. Near the end of the year, smeone approached me while I was demoing at Ben Franklin and offered the possibility of creating models for a variety of things, including hairpin lace and punchneedle items! Needless to say, much excitement ensued, and I doubt my ear-to-ear grin vanished for the rest of the day.

We haven't actualy managed to get together to discuss a lot of details, but my first project is to provide a couple of felted purses. Guess what? I've been reading all about it, but have no meaningful amount of feltable yarn in the stash to provide anything more than small pouches and clutches!

On the bright side, other needed items include crocheted lace (large amount of crochet thread in the stash) and punchneedle designs (good amount of appropriate linen scraps from past costumes in the stash). Woohoo!

Not sure I can really talk about who these models are for, but once my contact comes back from TNNA, we'll talk about more of those details.

In other news, I've finished a very cute pair of cabled socks based on a Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern from Ravelry, but they're somewhere near the bottom of the laundry bin, so will post pics later. Hmm, I owe you lots of photos now...

Happy crafting in the New Year!

Merry Christmas to all!

At last, Merry Christmas! Best wishes for the holidays to everyone, young and old, sick and healthy.

Progress

Congratulations! You made it through Monday. Not long until Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving will be very strange for hubby and I this year. My mother is getting married in January after being on her own for 25+ years. She's had a few dates here and there, but they were all jerks... until Bruce.

This is the cutest story: apparently my mom had a crush on him while they went to the same high school in West Linn, OR. After graduation, they each went their separate ways, married someone else, had chidren, etc. Neither mariage worked out, after differing amounts of time, and they met up at a reunion a few years ago. This past spring, Bruce started calling, coming to visit from his home in Oregon to my mom's in Yakima. And now, as of January 5, mom is marrying her high school sweetheart. Isn't that the best thing ever?

Here's where it applies to the knitting and the crocheting and the crafting stuff. My mom bought herself a red wedding dress. Yup. Not that I have a problem with that -- she's done the white dress thing already -- but it's customary for the maid/matron of honor (me, in this case) to wear the contrasting color that the bride has chosen, right? How does the matron of honor wear white without looking like the bride? Do you see the conundrum here?

So my wedding clothing will all be handmade. It will consist of a flowing ivory chemise/blouse (similar to one from the Pyramid Collection, except that it will actually fit someone who has arm muscles), a hairpin lace shawl, and a drop-stitch skirt (which looks a lot like hairpin lace).

The red shawl here is the one I've made for the wedding. I don't dare show the full thing in case anyone who doesn't need to know finds out about this blog. The light blue hairpin lace is a practice wrap I made after first getting the lace tool. What fun!

I'll get the skirt done shortly, but that picture may wait until the wedding anyway.

In other news, I'll have a couple more beadpoit patterns available soon. These will first be available for classes at Ben Franklin Crafts next month.

The large-scale chainmail jewelry kits are also available on my web site at http://www.horse-round.com/shop/maille.html. These kits have been a lot of fun to put together!
And now the best news of my year: the Tunisian Crochet Basketweave Sweater is finally available!
It's available from my web site (http://www.horse-round.com/shop/crochet_basketkim.html), but it will soon be available from Lulu.com as well: http://stores.lulu.com/horsenround. It's grinding away on creating the printable file as I write this. I'm beginning to think that going back and embedding my fonts might have been faster than uploading the original file after all.

At any rate, that's all the news for now. My hands are freezing, which would explain why there may be so many typos. The other reason is that there is a large orange cat parading back and forth across the desk and screaming at me when I try to warm my hands under her stomach. Of all the rude things!

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good meal!